The Oscar picture is murkier and stranger than even after Argo’smonster showing at the Screen Actors Guild awards Sunday. What does it mean with the Oscars coming up Feb. 24?

As the old saying goes, something’s gotta give.

Only three movies have won the Oscar for best picture without their directors also receiving nominations. The last one was Driving Miss Daisy in 1990 (sorry Bruce Beresford). The one before that? Grand Hotel in 1932.

That history suggested trouble for Ben Affleck and Argo and good news for the frontrunner Lincoln – until Argo started piling up the big guild awards. On Saturday, it won the Producers Guild award for best picture. Then, on Sunday, came the the real shocker: best ensemble cast from the SAG. As the Hollywood Reporter explains here, only two films have taken home both of those awards without winning best picture at the Oscars: Apollo 13 (1995) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

(The big canard in the awards world is that the Golden Globes, which also smiled upon Argo, matter at all. To take two just two recent examples, Avatar and The Social Network won best picture at the Globes and didn’t score on Oscar night. Here’s a list of the Globe winners through time.)

In short, a trend will be broken come Oscar night. At this point I’d give a slight edge to Argo for two reasons. Actors make up the largest voting body in the Academy. And Hollywood loves a movie in which it plays the hero. With its story of a producer (Alan Arkin) and a makeup artist (John Goodman) helping the CIA and the Canadian government save hostages from Iran, Argo fits the bill.